Yes, I think, career politicians should be barred from holding India's Presidential office. A politician may be much easier to manipulate by the political parties but he would not be absolutely non-partisan in a controversy. What happens when a politician is made a Speaker of the Lok Sabha, or of a State Assembly, has recently been seen. The Lok Sabha Speaker, Somnath Chatterjee (whom Leftists want to be President) dissolved the Budget session of the House 3-4 days before it was scheduled to end, refusing to concede to the demands of the BJP and some other parties for an all-party delegation to Nandigram in West Bengal, where the Leftist government had perpetrated a most heinous massacre of innocent villagers on 14th March, this year. Had the Speaker not been a politician, he would have agreed to such a legitimate demand. Similarly, the Speaker of the West Bengal Assembly, Hasim Abdul Halim, barred a demand by the opposition for a privilege motion against the Chief Minister who told brazen lies in the House on the number of farmers of Singur who had willingly let the government acquire their land for the Tatas' car factory, on a flimsy pretext of the submitted documents not having been attested. In both these cases, the Speakers put allegiance to their party, the CPI(M), over their supposed neutrality. Not being a career politician, the present President, Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam could return a brazenly selfish amendment bill about Parliamentarians holding offices of profit; a pol
